SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — Israel’s Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, says if Hezbollah violates terms of the ceasefire, “any deviation from this agreement will be enforced with fire. We are now moving toward a new phase, where the same determination that brought us to this agreement will be applied to enforcement.”
Amos Hochstein, the American envoy who negotiated the ceasefire, said it is important that the incoming Trump administration “understand and support it, because they are going to have to carry it forward and implement as they take office in just a few weeks.”
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Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told Fox News that the ceasefire deal with Lebanon is an opportunity for Israel “to take a little bit of a breather. Biden has agreed not to try to punish Israel at the [United Nations] Security Council. It’s a way for Israel to unlock some of the arms that are in a bottleneck that Biden has not delivered, even though they have been appropriated by Congress…”
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The Washington Examiner notes that Vermont’s entire congressional delegation, which includes two Jews, is hostile to Israel. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind-Vermont) introduced failed legislation to ban certain weapons sales to Israel, which his Senate colleague, Democrat Peter Welch voted for. And Democrat Becca Balint, who is Vermont’s only representative in the House, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and has voiced support for an embargo on certain weapon sales. Rachel Feldman of the Vermont-based Shalom Alliance told the newspaper that “the congressional delegation over the past year has exhibited a one-sided reflexive bias towards condemning Israel. … This puts Vermont Jews in a very difficult position.”
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Mexico’s Legislature voted on Thursday to eliminate seven watchdog agencies which Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum had said were ineffective and a waste of money that could better be used to supplement the nation’s social programs.
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told Sky News on Friday that “If we want to stop the hot stage of war [with Russia], we should take under [the] NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do fast. And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.”
NATIONAL
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as the Food and Drug Administration commissioner in the first Trump administration, told CNBC he doesn’t believe the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines reflect those of President-elect Trump. “I don’t think the president wants to see a resurgence of measles, wants to see a resurgence of whooping cough in his country. God forbid we have cases of polio in this country.”
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New York State Senator Liz Krueger told Fox News on Friday she was joking when she suggested that if President-elect Trump’s administration follows through on slashing federal funding for “sanctuary cities,” New York should consider seceding from the United States and becoming part of neighboring Canada. The Manhattan Democrat had called on New England states– specifically mentioning Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont—to also consider seceding.
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San Diego Jewish World staff report